The Final Day of the Presidential Campaign

The gym at Rushville Middle School in Lancaster, Ohio, was packed Sunday night – but not for a basketball game or some other sporting event.

On Sunday night, the competition was not about athletics but about politics – and the final lap of the race for the White House.

“Fourty-eight more hours,” Vice President Joe Biden told the crowd, according to ABC News, “and we’re going to be able to declare, because of Ohio, that we have won the election.”

Not so fast, according to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

“You hoped President Obama would live up to his promise to bring people together to solve problems,” Governor Romney said at a rally in Cleveland, Ohio. “But he hasn’t. And I will.”

In the final hours of the presidential campaign, both Governor Romney and President Obama – and their running mates – focused on a handful of key “battleground” states.

They’re called “battleground” states because the polls show the races there are extremely close.

And whoever wins most of those states is most likely to win the election on Tuesday.

Both the President and Governor Romney planned to campaign in Ohio again on Monday.

The President was also expected to campaign in two other key Midwestern states – Iowa and Wisconsin.

Governor Romney was also scheduled to campaign in Florida, Virginia and New Hampshire.

(Romney used to be the governor of New Hampshire’s neighbor to the south, Massachusetts.)

Most last-minute polls show the President leading Romney in most of the “battleground” states.

But the race is still considered too close to call.

So neither nominee is taking any chances.

“This is a close race between two different versions of America,” Mister Obama said at a rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, according to Reuters news service.

He says he’ll continue to represent all Americans if he’s re-elected — not just the wealthiest, as he claims Governor Romney would do.

Romney denies that allegation.

And at a rally in Cleveland on Sunday, he accused the President of being “divisive.”

“He’s been the most partisan,” Romney said, according to NBC News. “He’s been divisive, blaming, attacking, dividing.”

By Wednesday, one of the tightest, most divisive presidential campaigns in U.S. history will be over.

And we’ll know who will be President for the next four years.

Maybe.

In 2000, the election between Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore and Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush was so close that there was more than a month of recounts and legal battles — mainly in the hotly-contested state of Florida.

It wasn’t until mid-December that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling gave Mister Bush the victory.

That’s unlikely to happen again.

But with such a close race, there’s a chance we could wake up Wednesday to the same scenario.